Modern database and data warehousing systems are quite versatile. They can store vast amounts of data and recall such data quickly. Because of this, there is usually little hesitancy when storing data pertaining to a particular subject. Often, operators will store in a database as much data as is known about the particular subject. This data can be recalled later and used to generate various reports about the subject.
In the field of diagnostic testing, for example, a technician may prepare a batch of test subjects (sometimes referred to as “subjects-under-test”) and send them to one or more diagnostic laboratories (labs). Each lab may perform different sets of diagnostics on the batch and may therefore require reports containing data specific to the set of diagnostics performed by that lab. For example, veterinary lab A may require data describing what animal type and breed each of the test subjects are, whereas veterinary lab B may require data describing what types of food each test subject ate.
Typically, no one lab is interested in all the possible data on a batch of test subjects. Rather, each lab may be interested in a different subset of the possible data. For each lab, technicians may design data reports to contain specific subsets of the possible subject-data based on the type of diagnostics performed by the lab. This process is often tedious and time consuming, especially when there are a large number of labs and/or a large number of test subjects. Therefore, it may be desirable to utilize a concise technique for defining the desired data to be used in a given data report. It may also be desirable to utilize a method for generating such data reports.